A Long Way for a Short Cut

Wigtown is a village in Southern Scotland famed for having second hand bookshops, so I thought it may be a good idea to drop in on my way to work, just to check if anyone had any nice Three Investigators books. Wigtown is, as anyone who has ever been there will testify, in the middle of fucking nowhere, and it took a detour of 100 miles to squeeze it into my journey from Glasgow to Hampshire. I’m glad I did, though, because this is what I found in the Box of Frogs shop:

Nice, eh? I snapped up the Crooked Cat paperback and Whispering Mummy hardback (a snip at only £3). I decided against the omnibus editions at this point as I found them to be a little tatty. Sharp eyed bloggers will spot the Hardy Boys titles poking their spines in. If you are a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew collector, you could do worse than pay The Box of Frogs a visit as they had a couple of shelves heaving with some really nice vintage examples. I see that one of the Hardy Boys is a Harold Hill edition. Here is my hot tip for the day folks. If you ever come across any Harold Hill Hardy Boys books with their dustjackets, BITE THE DEALER’S HAND OFF. Hardy Boys fans go nuts for them, as they had different cover art than their American counterpart editions. Bloke by pen name of Varty did them. Most dealers in the UK are unaware of this, however, and tend to lump all old Hardy Boys dustjackets together, so the Harold Hills and Sampson Low editions are usually priced about the same, normally in the £10 bracket. I say, get them on eBay where they will fetch anything upwards of £40.

Wigtown is an excellent place, if you are a book collector. It has about a dozen or so bookshops, including what claims to be Scotland’s largest second hand book shop. Unfortunately, none of the other shops that were open had any Three Investigators for me, so I left with my modest haul of booty and only another 400 miles to drive home.